Distingiishing "spot" versus "contract" views of the labor market is of critical importance to a host of economic issues ranging from wage flexibility over the business cycle to firm financial valuation. The structural features of U.S. private pension plans permit surprisingly strong inferences...

The Federal Government is actively involved in encouraging the formation and growth of private pensions and in regulating their behavior. The primary form of encouragement is the government's tax subsidization of pensions. A primary attribute of pension plan provisions is an implicit tax on...

The proportion of workers covered by pensions has increased very substantially over the past two or three decades, and in particular the number of older workers with pensions continues to increase. During the same period,and especially in the past decade, the labor force participation of older...

The provisions of the pension plan in a large corporation are described in detail. The implications of the provisions are indicated by pension accrual profiles. These profiles are set forth, together with standard age-earnings and Social Security accrual profiles, in the form of life-time budget...

Fiscal sustainability is one of the most pressing policy issues of our time. Yet it remains difficult to quantify. Official debt is plagued with a number of measurement difficulties since its measurement reflects the choice of words, not policies. And forming the fiscal gap-the imbalance in the...

We simulate corporate tax reform in a single good, five-region (U.S., Europe, Japan, China, India) model, featuring skilled and unskilled labor, detailed region-specific demographics and fiscal policies. Eliminating the model's U.S. corporate income tax produces rapid and dramatic increases in...